


Hypothesis

by Mortior



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Blood, Depression, Dom/sub Undertones, Explicit Language, Injury, M/M, Oral Sex, Strangulation, Violence, cloaca!Davesprite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:38:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortior/pseuds/Mortior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk Strider is fascinated with the orange winged sprite that arrives on the Prospitan ship with their ancestors, but he soon finds himself fighting desperately against the memory of a dead brother and the consequences of losing one's identity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The prologue was supposed to be the beginning and end of this fic, written a long time ago when Dirk's character wasn't as developed, but then my muse wouldn't shut up, so here we are. The last chapter of this story will be a thorough exploration of cloaca!Davesprite.
> 
> Can also be found [here](http://mortior.tumblr.com/post/31217257360/hypothesis-1-3) on Tumblr.

He avoids you for the most part, and hasn’t spoken a single word to you directly since you arrived on the meteor with the huge Prospitan ship anchored on top. He looks almost the way you’d imagined, or rather, the human parts of him do. He’s got the right basic features- the curve of his nose, the arch of his brow- but he’s too delicate to fully invoke the phantom memory of your guardian, and you’re not sure if that’s one of the consequences of being prototyped with a bird, or if that’s just the way he looked (looks) as a younger version of him. It’s also in the way he carries himself, even accounting for the absence of legs. He can fly and glide with those broad, feathered wings, and float when he concentrates, but he usually defaults to anchoring his long, prehensile tail on the floor to stay upright. You remember the confident swagger of your predecessor, burned into your memory by hours of studying old footage, memorizing the way he held himself during interviews or walked through a crowd, and this orange, almost-doppelganger has only the barest hints of the confidence you anticipated when he moves silently through a room, tail whispering against the floor as he drags it fluidly behind him. 

You know that Dave (your Dave) had fine hair, so blonde it was almost white, but this Dave’s hair isn’t really hair anymore. From a distance there’s nothing unusual about it, but on the occasions when you get close, you can see the way the currents in the air lift it too easily, like it doesn’t have the weight it should, and you’re surprised by how badly you want to examine it more closely, find out whether it’s a side-effect of being a sprite, or if it’s a holdover from the bird anatomy, and some kind of hair-feather amalgamation. You want to examine the structure of a strand beneath a microscope, sketch the composition of the fibers in your notebook, you want to satisfy your curiosity at the way it somehow _bristles_ along with his feathers when he’s angry or surprised. It’s the only part of his physiology above the neck that seems to have changed, not counting whatever bird-like behaviors have been spliced into his brain. 

But the most strikingly inhuman parts of him, besides the tail and wings, are his hands. They’re a parody of avian feet and human fingers, the elongated digits segmented with rough flesh and tipped with long, scythe-like claws. You’ve figured out from watching the way the light plays across them when he moves that they’re not sharp along the edges, but pointed at the tip, and they stay that way, despite your having secretly witnessed his efforts to blunt them by dragging them savagely against the hard meteor rock, which only dulls them temporarily. You know that he tried to cut them once, and you witnessed the aftermath when he mangled one of them halfway off with a pair of scissors. The claw had still been partially attached (the cut hadn’t been anything close to clean), but the blood supply running through the quick had been damaged, and the orange dripping down his arm while a distraught Jade wrapped a towel around his hand finally confirmed your suspicion that his blood was the same tangerine color as everything else associated with him.

You’ve had several opportunities to “accidentally” touch the feathers on his wings, and their texture is nothing unexpected. But the downy feathering that covers every inch of him from the base of his throat to where you approximate his hips should be is uncommonly soft. He doesn’t seem to shed them, you don’t think they normally come off unless they’re pulled or damaged, but you’ve been fortunate enough to discover a single discarded one during your time on the meteor, and you kept it, hidden away in your sylladex. It’s no larger than your thumbnail, probably from somewhere around his neck, and it’s silky soft, like real bird down (seagull down, specifically. It’s the only kind you’re familiar with). Despite its outwardly uniform color, the way it shimmers when you turn it slowly against the light is almost ethereal, hinting at a dozen other shades and hues.

He’s become your own personal scientific obsession. You want to know what makes him tick, how the avian anatomy melded with the human, how the tendons and muscles of his wings fit into his back. You want to run your hands over him, find out whether or not the original human bones of his hips are still intact or if they’ve been modified to accommodate his curiously serpentine tail. You’re especially interested in his hands, you want to take them in your own and feel them between your fingers, map out where each phalange begins and ends, and deduce the proportional relationship with the oversized claws. You want to compare him to the articulated seagull skeletons you’re familiar with, make him stop shying away and hiding from you like a wild animal so you can sit him down and document the shape of his mismatched body in lines of graphite. One way or another, you’re going to solve the mystery of this orange, winged lamia with the face of your ancestor, and you’ll overcome all of his unwarranted, misdirected resentment and vindictive disregard towards you to accomplish it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can also be found [here](http://mortior.tumblr.com/post/39874665693/hypothesis-2-3) on Tumblr.

It’s been almost a month since you arrived on the meteor, and you’re no closer to solving the mystery of the orange sprite with the face of your ancestor than when you began.

You spent a lifetime watching seagulls. You recognize the subtle behaviors, the tiny mannerisms, even in something as small and insignificant as the way he turns his head. You’ve seen the nest in his room, the way he gathers things together and arranges them into a cluttered makeshift bed, and he must realize that what he’s doing is pure avian behavior, but he doesn’t seem to care enough to stop. Maybe he’s resigned to it, or maybe he’s helpless against the urge. Whatever the reason, it’s another data point in your analysis.

His color is strange, but only in the sense that you’ve never seen a living thing so completely drenched in such a saturated orange. Only a few times in nature have you seen the same color mirrored in the sky at sunset or in the individual scales of tiny, colorful fish, so in a sense it’s natural, just not normal. But you know he hates it. He’s uncomfortable in his own skin, and you don’t miss the way he avoids looking at himself. It’s subtle and hard to catch, but it’s unmistakable, and you add another point of data to your mental chart, but it’s getting you nowhere.

Every now and then when he’s distracted and you’ve got a bit of paper nearby, you start to sketch him, trying to figure out the way his bones fit together underneath his skin between doing rough drafts of robotic designs and jotting down lines of notes, but he tends to sense when you’re scrutinizing him, like he’s already accustomed to it somehow. You don’t usually have time for anything more than a few quick gestural shapes before he moves or catches on to what you’re doing, and you’ve got over a dozen pages of half-finished drawings. He’s a fascination to you, but while your interest in him was once mostly scientific, you’ve come to a few worrisome conclusions after several weeks of observing him.

He (and everyone else around him) uses the name “Davesprite,” but you still refuse to call him that. You’ve deduced that his identity is tied up in the name, along with his concept of self, which has been distressingly warped by what he’s been though. You tested your boundaries with him once ([+](http://mortior.tumblr.com/post/30076030550/another-excerpt-from-the-fic-im-never-going-to)), and he lashed out at you with such hostility that you decided to cut your losses and rethink your approach. You want to help him, but you can’t if he isn’t going to let you, and so far you’ve made no progress trying to push the issue, despite your persistence. As a consequence, he’s becoming increasingly intolerant of you. Whenever he catches you observing him, he gives you a thorough demonstration of the old phrase “if looks could kill” in an expression of how sincerely he wants to be left alone, and if he happens to notice you enter a room, he quickly leaves. He avoids his friends too, but he does it in a manner that’s more sullen and withdrawn than openly hostile, and you can’t help but feel that you’re moving hopelessly backwards with every attempt you make at trying to explain that his identity has nothing to do with the way his body fits together. There’s an air of tension on the meteor, and everyone seems to know that there’s something going on between you and the sprite version of Dave, including the other Dave himself.

“You know dude you probably shouldn’t be antagonizing him like that. I mean as kind of another version of the guy I can’t exactly condone your whole, uh … whatever it is you’ve been doing.”

Dave leans against the golden railing of the ship, feigning nonchalance, like you’re the one who casually walked up to him and started talking rather than the other way around.

“Don’t worry about it.” Your reply is short and toneless. You’re not interested in justifying what you’re trying to do, that you’re trying to save a damaged, self-hating version of the boy next to you, because it has nothing to do with this Dave. This Dave is more or less well-adjusted. He doesn’t sulk quietly around the meteor or isolate himself from his friends, he isn’t confused about who he is, nor does he feel like he’s lost his identity. But you’d have thought that maybe this Dave would care a little more about the well-being of another version of himself, and you resent him just a little for not taking the initiative, for leaving himself alone when he so clearly needs help. He of all people should know better. You would have never treated AR like this.

Eventually the day comes when the sprite vanishes completely, and you’re not the only one wondering where he’s gone, as you distantly overhear Jade asking someone else if they’ve seen him. Normally you don’t go looking for him so much as place yourself in his vicinity, but as the days go by and there’s no sign of him, you finally decide to break your own rule and seek him out, quietly leaving the main room where your friends are gathered and making your way into the less inhabited areas of the ship. It takes forever to search the vessel, walking through endless chambers of noisy golden machinery and storage rooms filled to the ceiling with huge, unused mechanical parts that make your fingers itch with the urge to disassemble them, but eventually you reach the end and make your way down the long ramp to the outside, planning to search the cluster of tall grey buildings next to the ship after checking the cracked surface of the meteor.

The void is familiar and cold against your skin, as it always is, an old friend like the rushing waves of the sea and the smell of salt, and you finally catch sight of the sprite after a few quiet hours of wandering alone among broken, towering rocks and deep black fissures in the ground. He’s a thumbprint of alien color against the grey stone, curled up next to a particularly large, jagged rock and glowing faintly against the semidarkness. His wings are folded securely around his body, for emotional comfort or against the cold, or a little of both, you can’t be sure. Although his back is turned to you, he still hears the sound of your footsteps as you approach, and the way he looks at you when he turns makes you slow to a stop.

“Leave me alone.” He growls, rising up on his tail until he’s just a little taller than you. When you slowly resume your approach, the feathers around his neck start to bristle.

“I just want to talk. I’m trying to help-”

“I don’t want your fucking help!” His shout echoes off of the rocks. “You are not my goddamn brother!”

“Yes I am, Dave.” 

“Stop calling me that!”

“Calm down.” You stop about twenty feet away from him, the air between the two of you thick with something that makes you subconsciously slide your feet into a practiced stance. “Look, I understand that you’re upset. But whether you like it or not, whether it makes _sense_ or not, you and I are family, and-”

“We are not ‘family.’” He hisses. “The only ‘family’ I had is lying dead on his back with a sword through his chest.”

“…and I am not going to stop trying to help you.”

“What’s it gonna take, _bro_?” He practically spits the word at you. You watch with growing unease as the huge orange wings on his back start to unfold. “What do I gotta do to get you to leave me alone? ‘Cause if you don’t,” His eyes narrow. “I’m gonna make you. Now I will ask you one last fucking time to back off.”

“I’m sorry, Dave, but I can’t.” 

His expression darkens, and you watch as he spreads his hands, along with the curved claws that tip every finger. His voice is low and ominous.

“Alright then. Have it your way.”

When he rushes at you, it’s slower than you anticipated, the heavy wings obviously dragging him down. You ready yourself with your hands up to catch his wrists before he can rend you with his claws, but then he suddenly lifts the huge wings up and out, opening them wide to catch the air before he flaps once, and the sheer force of it lifts him and propels him forward. You don’t have enough time to adjust your stance to the change in speed, and he hits you hard, rattling your teeth painfully and sending you backwards into a desperate twist to break your fall. Your shoes scuff loudly against the ground as you slide, trying and failing not to cut up your hands as you regain your balance, but he keeps coming at you, lashing out with claws spread wide, glinting wickedly as they catch the light. Although his initial approach caught you off-guard, he’s heavier and significantly slower than you with the extra wingspan, and a lifetime of training and fighting off drones have made you a master at feint and dodge maneuvers. He nearly screams in frustration at being unable to hit you as you manage to avoid every well-aimed swiped of his razor-tipped fingers while he drives you backwards, but a lunge followed by a particularly vicious rake of his claws almost catches you across the face, knocking your shades off, which clatter against the ground somewhere out of sight in the darkness, and you’re forced to roll out of the way when he turns and sweeps his tail across the ground in an attempt to knock your feet out from under you. 

The ferocity of his attack is surprising, and he’s far more proficient at fighting than you expected. Despite the way his body is mismatched, he seems to have figured out a long time ago how to use the wings to boost his movement instead of letting them impede him, and he uses them to his advantage. When he gives up trying to hit you at close range, he spreads them out wide and starts flapping in long, powerful sweeps. You pause to catch your breath as you watch him lift into the air, gusts of wind stirring up grey dust that clings to your clothes, until he’s high above you. Then the angle of his wings changes, and that’s all the warning you have before he suddenly dives at you, and you manage to dodge out of the way, but his tail catches you hard like a whip across your back, knocking you forward onto the ground. As soon as you’re back on your feet, he’s already turning in the air to come back around. On the second pass he dips lower, grabbing at you with claws outstretched like talons and just catching the edge of your shirt as you duck down, tearing a small hole in the fabric. He makes a wide arc as he flies out well past the edge of the meteor and into the black void, a glowing orange beacon in the darkness, distantly circling the giant rock before changing his trajectory and coming towards you again, but he’s waited too long, given you too much time to recover, and you’re ready for him. There’s a chance you’ll end up dislocating something with what you’re about to try, but you need to get him out of the air quickly before he can get a grip on you.

When he gets closer, you stand your ground, and at the last moment you run towards him, gaining enough speed to drop low and slide with your legs against the rock, shredding your pants and tearing your skin. When he passes overhead you reach up and wrap both arms around his left wing next to his shoulder where the joint is, and you immediately drop your weight like an anchor. He screeches furiously as you drag him down, flapping harder to compensate for the sudden load as he pulls you across the ground, your shoes leaving long skid marks in the dusty rock. When he gives up trying to regain altitude, he claws at you viciously, raking across your arm and leaving wet red lines in your bicep, and you hiss through your teeth at the pain. But you’ve slowed him down enough to regain some purchase with your feet, and you dig your heels in, then push off, using the momentum to swing onto his back, and wrap your other arm under his free wing. Before he can throw you off, you pull down and back with all your strength, making the huge orange wings fold and forcing him to catch himself on the ground with his tail. 

He struggles against you, writhing and shouting curses, trying to reach back and rake at you again, but you’ve got him in an effective lock. A few minutes go by, and you almost lose your grip a few times, before he eventually tries to crush you against the ground, but the move is exactly what you were waiting for. You meet the ground with your feet, digging in and using his own momentum to twist and pull against his weight, and he goes down hard, throwing up a choking cloud of dust as the two of you hit the ground.

You have to end this now before he hurts himself or you any further, and you quickly move to straddle him, pushing him down as he turns over onto his back. You need to remove the threat of those bladed claws first, and you firmly pin one of his arms just below the elbow with your knee, but he manages to avoid your maneuver with the other, and your gambit fails. You can’t reach out fast enough to stop him from lashing out, and he buries the claws of one hand deep into your back, slicing through your flesh into both skin and muscle. You bite down on a cry of agony as your shoulder explodes with pain, it’s enough to make your vision swim, but you fight through it and grab his elbow, slamming his arm into the ground, and the way his claws _drag_ through your skin before sliding free almost makes you sick, but you don’t let your grip weaken, even as you feel your shirt already soaking with blood.

Now that you have him securely pinned, he writhes and shouts and batters you with his wings, beating them viciously against your head and shoulders, making you duck and shut your eyes against the onslaught. He screams insults and threats at you, tries to throw you off, claws screeching against the hard rock as he twists and turns his serpentine body to find some sort of leverage. His tail thrashes around behind you, coiling and thumping savagely against the ground. You can practically feel him vibrating with rage, he might actually kill you if you let him go right now, whether he means to or not. You lean down a little, just enough so that he can hear you.

“Dave, calm down-”

“Let me _go_!”

“Dave-”

“I swear to god, Dirk, I will tear you apart if you don’t get off of me right fucking now!”

“Dave, I’m not trying to hurt you, I just want to talk.”

Then you feel it, his thick tail coiling around your waist, up your back, and again around your chest, as he starts to squeeze. The pain isn’t unbearable, but he makes it hard to breathe, and black spots quickly start to bloom in your vision. It’s not quite enough to choke you, but then you feel something brush your shoulder, and you realize with dread what he’s trying to do as the tip of his tail slides over the front of your neck. He can’t wrap all the way around your throat, but he gets about halfway there before you decide that this has to end now. 

You’ve still got one hand free, having used it to brace yourself against the ground up until now. He’s glaring furiously at you, and when you reach down he tosses his head, trying to get away from your touch. You don’t give him a chance to catch on to what you’re doing, waiting for the exact moment after he inhales before quickly reaching down, covering his mouth with your palm and pinching his nose shut with your thumb, and the fury on his face is abruptly replaced by a look of pure and honest horror as his struggles turn silent but significantly more desperate. He’s unable to speak or breathe, and his tail wrenches free and lashes around behind you, all coordination in it gone, while his claws scrabble at the rock frantically and his wings beat and push against the ground, kicking up enough dust to make you cough. He almost manages to throw you off, but he’s already exhausted. You are too, but you’ve got time on your side, keeping him firmly trapped while he fights. You lean down, ignoring the way the punctured muscles in your shoulder burn viciously, and keeping your grip secure, you speak with a calm, even voice.

“Dave. Calm down.”

When he blinks at your words, you can see something wet at the corners of his eyes, and you realize that his tears are the same orange color as everything else about him. You should have expected that, but for some reason it throws you off.

“I’m not going to let you suffocate, but you need to listen to me, now.”

You can hear him straining to breathe, can hear the muffled sounds in his throat, but this is the most crucial part. You have to do this right, you won’t get another chance. He blinks again, and this time a pair of tears trail down either side of his face, wetting his hair as he watches you.

“I get that you don’t want my help. Normally, I’d back off and let it be. But I can’t.”

His jaw tightens, and even though he’s close to running out of air, he still manages to glare at you. The trickle of blood running down your arm reaches your hand and pools between your fingers while you talk quickly, mindful of the fact that you have to let him breathe soon.

“I’m not doing this because it makes me happy, Dave. I don’t like getting the shit kicked out of me, but guess what? This isn’t about me, and I know that you don’t want to hear this, but I’m not going to leave you alone, because you’re _not okay_. And even if you try to hurt me, I am not leaving you. Do you understand?”

You lean back, slowly relaxing your grip on his mouth and easing up enough to let him move again, settling your weight where his tail meets his hips. He makes no immediate move to throw you off, panting hard to catch his breath as he glares, somewhere between haughty resentment and grudging curiosity. Even though it makes you feel ashamed, you can’t stop the hint of emotion in your voice from coming out, frustrated and exhausted with the miserable way he’s been fighting you this entire time.

“I may not be the brother you grew up with, but I have never once claimed to be him. I don’t have to be him to care about you, and just because we’re from different worlds, it doesn’t mean we aren’t family.”

You can hear the whispering sound of his tail as it sweeps dangerously from side to side behind you. He’s watching you silently, like he isn’t sure what to do with you yet, but you figure it’s a good sign that he isn’t trying to strangle you anymore, so you take the hard-won opportunity he’s affording you and try to talk to him openly about this, the way you’ve wanted to ever since he first arrived, when you first laid eyes on him and saw how broken and damaged he was.

“I know it’s hard when your identity changes. I know you don’t feel like yourself anymore.” You lean down, getting closer to him so you can keep your voice low. This temporary lull between the two of you is fragile, if the way he’s staring and tensing underneath you is anything to go by, but the physical part of this is over. You have to appeal to his emotions and his reason now, or you’ll never get anywhere with him no matter what you try. “I know you’re angry. I know you want to lash out at something or someone and make them hurt the way you’re hurting. But I also know that you would never hurt your friends, even though I’ve seen the way John treats you, how he doesn’t think of you as who you are anymore.” He frowns when you mention John. You’re testing the ice with this, threatening to start everything again, so you keep your voice as soothing as you can manage, despite the way your injuries throb painfully now that the adrenaline is wearing off. “I’ve seen how he forgets about you. He treats the other Dave like he’s the only Dave here, but he’s not. You’re still youself. Prototyping didn’t change that.”

“I’m a fucking bird sprite freak.” He growls at you, still angry, but this time it’s directed at himself. It’s a change, but not the one you’re looking for, so you continue, keeping your voice soft and even.

“You’re still yourself.”

“No I’m not. I’m a sprite. I’m just another part of the stupid game.”

“You’re still Dave.”

“I’m _not_.” He hisses, more tears falling as he starts to tremble slightly.

“You are.”

“No, shut up.” He struggles to get the words out, eyes wet with orange tears, his breath becoming uneven as he starts to cry. And watching him crack like this, you can’t help yourself, leaning forward and ever so gently pressing a kiss to the corner of his eye. He could easily tear open your throat right now if he wanted to, but you know that the danger is finally over when he lets out a quiet sob, and you’re almost there, just at the very precipice. All he needs is one last tiny nudge, not even a push so much as a purposeful gust of wind. You’re here to make sure he falls, and you’ll catch him safely at the bottom.

“Dave.” You whisper the name, and he’s trying and failing to keep the hiccuping sobs quiet, hisses the word ‘Dave _sprite_ ’ at you, and you shake your head. “No, that’s not who you are.”

“I’m… I … I’m not …”

You gently brush the hair away from his eyes, damp from his tears. He sniffs loudly, and you gently kiss his brow, you can’t help it.

“You know who you are. I know you do.”

“I’m not him anymore!” He cries, breaking the relative silence around the two of you.

“You are.”

“No, stop it, shut up!”

You press your forehead against his as you meet his tear-soaked eyes, see the anger, the misery, and most of all, the thing that gives you hope- the pleading for someone, anyone, to help him. And you’ve been here this whole time, you’ve been helping him, and there’s nothing he can do short of killing you that will make you stop.

His eyes are colored toxic and orange like the rest of him, and from this close you can see the little differences, the way the texture of the iris isn’t quite human anymore, but there’s one important thing that this Dave has never understood.

“Just because you’re not human anymore, it doesn’t mean you’re not a person.”

You thread your hands gently into his hair as he finally breaks down. You whisper things to him under the sound of his intermittent sobs, holding him while your shoulder drips blood onto the dirt-caked feathers of his wings, telling him that it’s okay, he doesn’t need to be afraid anymore, you’ll take care of him, if he’ll let you, he just needs to trust you. He begs you to stop, voice rough from crying, and you kiss the bridge of his nose, tell him it’s okay, you’re here, you’ve got him, and you aren’t going to let him go. You stroke his hair as he shakes and sobs into your shirt, and even though the cold from the grey rock threatens to creep through your clothes and into your skin, he eventually lifts his wings and wraps them protectively around you like a blanket, covering you with soft feathers, dusty from the fight, but warm against the chill of the void as he holds you close while he cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart for this chapter [here](http://yen-mae.tumblr.com/post/70380938698/art-for-mortiors-fic-hypothesis-here-check-out) by yen-mae and [here](http://mortior.tumblr.com/post/43847560408/homeostatic-cherry-a-part-of-the-wip-for-the) (wip) by homeostatic-cherry!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can also be found [here](http://mortior.tumblr.com/post/43920856106/hypothesis-3-3) on Tumblr.

When the human version of Dave opens his door and sees the two of you standing in the hallway covered in dirt and blood, he spends a long moment staring. You can’t really blame him. Your shirt is soaked red and you’re cradling your injured arm, which isn’t dripping anymore, but the parallel lines in your skin tell enough of a story to make him turn and stare at the guilty sprite half-floating behind you with matching stains on his feathers and claws. He ushers you in wordlessly after you break the silence, asking him as politely as you can manage considering the amount of pain you’re in to quit staring and help you if it’s not too much of a burden on his busy schedule.

Getting out of your bloodied shirt ends up being enough of an ordeal that you resort to letting him cut it off with his sword. The shoulder wound is bad enough to elicit an exclamation of ‘what the fuck did you do, try to skewer him?’ at his sprite, who sits awkwardly in the corner of the room for the duration of your visit. He tries to grill you both on what happened while he cleans the punctures on your back, in between thinly veiled remarks that you should have listened to him, which you pointedly ignore. You answer a few of his questions with short, noncommittal responses, and eventually he gets the idea and stops prodding for information. You might feel bad about dismissing him in such a way under normal circumstances, especially since he’s currently helping you stave off a potentially crippling infection, but you figure it’s the least he can do since this situation is partly his fault, whether he understands that or not. You’re not interested in explaining it to him, and intercepting the questions he directs at the sprite keeps you occupied until he’s finished with the impromptu first aid. 

Later, when your shoulder is wrapped and your arm stitched (somewhat messily, but it’ll have to do), you leave the other Dave’s room with a brief but sincere thank you for his help. The sprite trails quietly behind as you navigate the long, dark corridors of the meteor’s buildings, and the trek across the outside towards the golden ship is brief, but the silence between the two of you is heavy with things that are going to need talking about sooner rather than later. He’s probably just as deep in thought as you are about what’s going to come next, but you’re hoping that he won’t end up rethinking things before you have a chance to work it out with him.

When you enter the ship, he follows you back to your room without a word, and you sit him down on the bed before getting to work cleaning his soiled feathers. He shies away a little when you reach out, but there’s very little of the resentment from before, his reaction at this point probably due more to nerves and the fact that he’s been isolating himself from people for so long that he isn’t used to being touched anymore. The dirt comes out of his wings in a cloud when you part the long feathers with your fingers, and you enjoy the way it feels, even though you’re limited to using only one arm. You’re both covered in grit, but it clings to him differently, and you do what you can with your hand and the remains of your shirt, but eventually concede and retrieve a damp rag from your bathroom.

The red stains on his feathers are stubborn, but he sits quietly while you rub away at them until the color is smudged enough to be unrecognizable. You blacken the rag with the grime on his body, running a thumb reassuringly over the back of his neck when he holds his wings open at your request. You can tell it’s hard for him, with so many things left unsaid between the two of you after what amounted to a violent expression of his unhappiness, but there’s almost as much being said in the silent touches you give him as there would be in your words, and you think he’s beginning to understand from the way the tension slowly leaves his shoulders as you clean your blood from his claws until they shine.

He waits after you finish, staring at his tail where it curls and uncurls restlessly on the floor, while you dig through your meager belongings to find a clean shirt. Lifting your arm ends up being more trouble than it’s worth, and you settle instead for a clean pair of pants, not bothering to check if he’s watching while you change. When you’re done, you sit next to him on the bed. The hair you wiped clean is sticking to his forehead, just above his downcast eyes, and when you reach out to comb it back with your fingers he looks up at you, startled out of whatever journey his thoughts were taking him on.

“Bro . . .”

“Dirk.” You correct him. He nods.

“Right. Sorry.” His tail coils over itself tightly, a nervous gesture. “Dirk.”

You wait for him to keep talking, but he doesn’t say anything else until you open your mouth to speak.

“I’m sorry. I am, really.” He won’t meet your eyes, but you can see the way his expression changes when he stares down at his claws. “I don’t know what the fuck my problem is. I don’t usually, you know . . . _hurt_ people like that.” When he finally looks at you, it’s miserable with guilt. “I’m really sorry.”

“I know.” You put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, pushing down the dampened feathers that are sticking up in unruly positions as they dry. “It’s okay.”

“No it’s not.” He looks to be on the verge of tears again, and you can’t deny that you still have a lot of work to do. You’ve gotten past the hardest part, but now comes the tedious recovery, easier since he’s actually listening to you instead of fighting you, but you can already tell that it’s going to be a full-time job helping him break out of this.

“Dave, it’s okay. Trust me, alright? I need you to do that.” He nods again, curling his hands into loose fists when you reach out and cover them with your own. “I’m here to help you, but you have to let me.”

“Okay.”

It ends up being a much shorter conversation than you anticipated, but you’re starting to realize the extent to which this Dave is just tired of fighting. You can’t be sure how long he’s been caught up in his self-loathing, neglecting everything and everyone around him until the damage was done and you came along to pick away at his hardened regard for life, but you’re invested in this now, in this unhappy, mismatched boy sitting next to you, and you’re ready to see this through until he finds himself again.

—————————————————————————————————————----------------------------------------

Weeks go by on the anchored Prospitan ship, but now with every passing day, you make a little more progress.

You’re slowly working on the sprite, encouraging him to open up and gradually maneuvering around his skittish nature, which is fortunately well-complemented by your endless patience. You don’t hesitate to seize ground wherever he concedes it, pushing him carefully but steadily, and always keeping tabs on his limits. You test his boundaries until he decides when it’s enough, and he’s not shy about letting you know when you’ve worn out your privileges for the day, ending a conversation when he tells you to back off, and giving him space until he comes looking for you when he’s ready to talk again. 

Through your lengthy, hours-long sessions with him, you’ve learned more about his home and his universe, including your alternate self, than you ever thought you’d have the opportunity to. He tells you in long, soft monologues about his childhood home in Texas, about the tall apartment building where he grew up with his older brother, learning to fight with a sword and teaching himself how to develop his own pictures in his room, while making friends with the people he met online. He tells you about the city, about the cars rushing past below and the smell of exhaust when his window was left open, and how the sound would keep him awake at night. He talks about music and television, outlines the plots from some of his favorite shows, back when he was still a kid trying to fight off boredom in between chatting with his friends and playing around with his Bro, either on the roof with swords or in the apartment with video games and pillow forts. He doesn’t bring up his brother as much for the first few weeks, but after a while it becomes the focal point in his conversations with you, and the more he talks about his Bro, the more you come to understand why he ended up the way he is now, and why he rejected himself as the “real Dave.” You learn all about the way your older self died, taking his own sword through his chest when he fought against the Jack Noir from their Sburb session, and how the other Dave didn’t see his brother die and didn’t even find the body until later. You knew this Dave had been injured once, but you didn’t know the circumstances, or why he’d never bothered to clean the crusted blood off of the pendant he still carries around with him. He never says it out loud, but you can tell that he holds himself responsible for what happened, and the guilt of it is eating away at him from the inside. He blames himself for not being able to protect his brother, that his faults resulted in the death of the only family he had, and you spend multiple nights with him, watching him fight back tears and holding him when he can’t anymore. You aren’t capable of taking away the pain of losing his guardian, but you do everything you can to remind him that he doesn’t have to go through this alone anymore.

Your means of comforting him have become increasingly physical as time goes by. He seeks you out, not only for the kind of therapeutic conversations you’ve been engaging in daily, but sometimes for nothing more than the physical closeness he’s been depriving himself of for so long. He touches you sometimes when he thinks you’re not paying attention, curling his tail hesitantly around your leg or carefully laying a clawed hand over your arm like he’s the one testing your boundaries, waiting to see how close you’ll let him get before you push him away, but you never discourage him. You don’t miss the way the color in his face gets darker when he leans into you, and the few times you wrap your arms around him, he practically melts against you. After a while of letting down your own usually stringent barriers for him, you’re starting to become a little suspicious of your motives. 

It doesn’t help that he’s so dependent on your attention, or that you’re enjoying it more than you probably should. It’s nice to finally have someone respond positively to your efforts at helping them, rather than rebuke you for being too overbearing and controlling. You’ll admit that you have your own problems dealing with people, but the way Dave fits into you, how he willingly opens himself up and spreads out his problems and insecurities for you to scrutinize, it’s become an addiction of yours, and you can’t help but indulge sometimes when he lets his guard down. He’s at his most vulnerable when your conversations extend into the late hours of the night, when he’s tired and emotionally drained, and you’re alone with him in your room where he’s meticulously rebuilt his makeshift nest in a corner. He stays with you now, and although you’ve gotten a few comments from your friends and his about the complete one-eighty of your relationship, none of them seem to have noticed the way your interactions with him have turned somewhat questionably intimate. Technically you’re still family, but your only familial relation is genetic, and in spite of the implications that come with the increasingly physical nature of his attachment to you, neither of you seem willing to put a stop to it.

You spent the first few months after his arrival in your session trying to deconstruct his mixed anatomy, a kind of new and intriguing science project to distract you from the realities of the game, but now, when you thread your fingers into his wings and watch the way the orange feathers part between them, feeling the insulating warmth from the soft plumage and hearing the way he sighs contentedly at the sensation, your past obsession with his physiology seems like a shallow and fleeting notion. There’s significantly more to him than you anticipated, the complicated and often tragic aspects of his personality so much more fascinating to you now than the simple, one-dimensional bones and flesh underneath his neon skin. You’re mapping away your curiosity little by little, as you comfort him with long, gentle strokes down his back and across his shoulders, taking far more satisfaction from the way he relaxes under your touch than from the knowledge of how a particular muscle fits into his physique. He’s a novelty of blended physiology, but your motivations have changed and shifted into something that’s less curiosity and more open, honest affection for the only person in your life who’s ever needed you this much.

Soon, you’re running both of your hands through his hair, tucking the light orange strands behind his ears, and watching his eyes close at your touch. You trail your fingers down the sides of his neck and comb them through the swell of feathers that cover his shoulders like a thick mantle, run your palms down his chest and over the human parts of him until you reach the point at which he deviates from the familiar. It’s late, far past the time at which everyone else on the ship has settled into their rooms for the night, and he’s with you as usual. But tonight instead of curling up in his oversized nest, he asked you, with only a little hesitation, if he could sleep with you in your bed. You consented, never willing to pass up an opportunity to be in close proximity to him, and now that he’s curled around your legs like a warm, gentle serpent, you can’t find it in yourself to stop running your hands over every inch of his body, listening to the way he sighs quietly when you hold him close and press an affectionate kiss to the side of his head. As your hands pass the curve of his back, the texture of his skin changes, becoming smoother and more uniform, marking the end of his human physiology. He rests his head against your shoulder as you trace the contour of his hip, hands held in loose fists against your shirt to protect you from his claws. You’ve never cared so much for anyone before, and he makes it so easy for you to forget the years of isolation you spent waiting and planning for when you would finally escape your solitary, man-made island and obtain your freedom. Being with him has changed you somehow, soothing the pent-up restlessness you’d accumulated from existing in the same space for sixteen years. The realization doesn’t bother you like it should, you can’t bring yourself to regret pursuing this with him, not when he’s curled into your chest like something fragile and precious.

When your hands drift down further, past his hips and along the thick expanse of his tail, he shifts, eyes opening halfway with the slightest frown. 

“Dirk . . .” He whispers softly, almost too quiet to hear. “Don’t . . .”

“What’s wrong?” You ask, keeping your voice low to match his. He’s not averse to being touched anymore, but something seems to be causing him discomfort as your hands still and he makes an unhappy sound with his face pressed into your shirt.

“It’s just . . . . . . don’t, okay?”

You remove your hands, resting them instead on the bed behind him as his tail moves, wrapping tighter around your legs, and you recognize the attempt at comforting himself when he coils around you like this. Now you feel obligated to find out what the problem is.

“Dave. Tell me.” You ask, sliding your hand under his wing when he doesn’t respond and rubbing between his shoulders where he likes it the most. You can feel him getting tense, despite your reassurances, so you massage at his shoulders until he relaxes again, and when you repeat your question, he responds quietly.

“It’s too much.”

“Too much of what.”

He shifts again, unhappy with your prodding, but doesn’t loosen his secure hold on your legs. You run your hand down his back, taking note of the way he’s tensing up again, and you do your best to soothe him, rubbing in firm circles along the sides of his body until you reach his tail and his breath hitches unmistakably. Your hands freeze, and his shoulders hunch over as he curls into you. Suddenly you’re encroaching on something that you’ve been more or less tiptoeing around for the last few weeks, and there’s no explanation for the nest of butterflies in your stomach other than the fact that you’ve been anticipating this without realizing or acknowledging it. 

Slowly, like you’re assessing the temperature of a potentially scalding hot surface, you place a hand on the curve of his waist and move it down, traveling gradually over the peak of his hip. His grip around your leg tightens, just shy of painful, and when you reach the smooth flesh that denotes the beginning of his tail, he shifts again and makes a tiny, muffled sound. When you venture lower, he shudders, breathing harder just from the simple motion, and there’s no doubt at this point that you’re turning him on. You’ve always prided yourself on your abundant self-discipline and control, but as the reality of the situation sinks in to the sound of his restless breathing, you’re almost overcome with a sudden, irrational rush of arousal. You knew that you had questionable feelings for him, buried somewhere in your own multilayered, convoluted emotions that even you have a hard time navigating through, but the sheer magnitude of what you find there now is startling. Seeing the evidence of him physically desiring you back is severely testing your self-control, and you’re alarmingly close to giving in, too close to stop from curling your fingers under his chin. When you coax his face up, away from the safety of your shirt until you can look him in the eyes, he looks back at you with all the fear and desperation of someone anticipating rejection, but helpless to the persisting hope that they’ll be loved back. The analogy fits together in your mind like something falling naturally into place, because you realize, as you tilt his chin up and lean down, brushing your nose against his and feeling his breathing stop when your lips just barely touch, that you’re in love with him.

He’s still for a moment, tense and coiled against you, before he lets out a breathy, desperate sound and presses his mouth hard against yours. He almost grabs your shoulders, but remembers at the last moment and fists his hands to paw against your back instead. You push him down into the bed, meeting his sudden enthusiasm tenfold, and when his mouth opens you take the opportunity to taste him with your tongue, earning you a pained moan that goes straight to your groin. Your capacity to think objectively about this has rapidly diminished to the point where you don’t even try to stop yourself from pushing your hips against his, the speed at which this is happening is so far outside your realm of control, but you don’t care. His shallow, uneven breathing in your ear as you break away to graze your teeth over his neck is undoing you. He whines your name in broken, stilted syllables, and you’re startled to find tears in his eyes when you lift your head to look at him. He’s shaking against you, coiling around you tight to pull you closer until it hurts, pleading in a whispering voice to ‘please, don’t stop, please,’ and you obey, leaning down to explore the skin of his neck with your mouth while your hands find the curve of his back and pull him up against your body. The feathers on his shoulders tickle the bottom of your chin as you move lower, and you skip over the thick plumage to press your lips against the center of his sternum. He’s breathing hard, and when you roll your tongue around one of his nipples, feeling it pebble in your mouth with the attention, he quickly unravels, trying and failing to hold back a mantra of curses. You run your hands down along his tail from behind, and when you repeat the motion from the front, he sucks in a breath and goes rigid beneath you. When you do it again, he arches into it and groans through his teeth, turning his head to the side and panting loudly when you ease up.

You know from prior observation that he has some kind of genital structure where his legs used to be, just at the end of his hips and the start of his tail. It’s hidden by feathers, but every now and then when the light hits it just right, you can see the hint of a seam there, so you have an idea of where to go when you place a hand on his abdomen and purposefully move it down. He fists the mattress as you pass over his hips, tearing the fabric under his claws, until you reach a spot that feels warmer than the skin around it, the area beneath your fingers a little softer and more pliant. When you experimentally press down on it, he chokes on a cry as his hips jerk up against your hand.

“D-dirk, god, fuck . . . _please_.”

You part the feathers, holding them aside with your thumb and forefinger to expose the seam in his flesh, the color of it flushed a darker orange than the rest of him. You blow on it gently, watch the way it twitches, taking note that whatever anatomical structure he has down here is muscular. You’re intimately familiar with seagull anatomy, and you’ve suspected for a while that his genital structure was replaced with something a little more avian since you noticed there was something there below his waist, so the similarity to a cloaca isn’t a complete surprise.

“Do you want me to touch you?” You ask, you have to ask, even though it’s apparent that he does, but he pauses before answering you, conflicted or embarrassed, or a combination of the two.

“Yes . . . please . . .”

“Have you done this before?”

“N-no.” He says, the word drawn out in a whine as you push more of the feathers out of the way, his hips twitching under your touch.

“You haven’t? Why not?”

“I can’t.” He whispers, lifting a trembling hand and spreading his fingers to show you the claws. You stroke your thumb along the side of the slit, and he shudders and fists the bed again, gritting his teeth against a moan.

“You could have used something else, like your tail. Why didn’t you?”

He falls silent at your inquiry, and shakes his head when you repeat the question. 

“Dave, when was the last time you got off like this? After you prototyped yourself.”

“I . . .” He takes in a shaky breath, refusing to meet your eyes. “I haven’t, okay? I couldn’t. I tried.”

“It didn’t work?”

“It just . . . I tried, but . . .” He groans in frustration, shifting his hips under your hands, but you keep your touch on him light, until he stills again. “Please, Dirk, I need this. Please try. It still f-feels . . . fuck, it feels so fucking good, just, please . . . keep going.”

He’s begging you to touch him, and you don’t have to think twice about complying, tracing your fingers around the perimeter of the slit and feeling his tail coil around your midsection as he moans breathily in relief. Despite his claims, it’s apparently enough stimulation to make him lift his hips against your fingers, and you wonder whether the source of his sexual frustrations have been physical or psychological in nature, his negativity towards his own anatomy maybe preventing him from reaching orgasm by himself. So you keep track of his reactions as you touch him, gently running the tip of one finger down the center from top to bottom, pressing him into the bed with a hand on his hip so he doesn’t accidentally penetrate himself with it. He arches his back when you repeat the motion, hard enough to drag slowly across the flushed skin, and when you increase the pressure just enough to push cautiously inside, he jerks against your grip, his words a jumble of pleading curses as you withdraw your hand to put your fingers in your mouth and wet them thoroughly.

“Dirk, fuck, please don’t stop, please- _aaah_!”

He cries out when you slip back inside of him, and he suddenly reaches down and grabs your wrist, pushing you in deeper before you can stop him, until you’re up to the last knuckle in warm, smooth flesh. He gasps with every breath as he starts to helplessly buck his hips, more or less fucking himself with your fingers, and you aren’t certain if things are even meant to go in there, but you figure he would have stopped himself by now if it were really hurting him. You watch him for a while, taking in the sight of him completely losing his composure, then help him by moving your hand in slow, even circles, firmly massaging against the soft walls inside. He keens and shudders in response, squeezing his eyes shut.

“How do you feel? Think you might be getting somewhere?” You ask him, pushing in harder against his vice-like grip and rubbing a little deeper, and he practically convulses, biting down on what was almost a shout. 

“Nngh, I-I think so, just . . . don’t stop.”

He lets go of your wrist after you pry open his claws with your other hand, and goes back to shredding your mattress while you explore inside of him. You’re starting to wish you had some kind of lubricant, because even though you started out with saliva-slicked fingers, you can feel your range of motion impeded by friction as they dry. He lets out a particularly high-pitched whine, and you lean down to kiss his shivering abdomen. Then an idea occurs to you, and you keep your face close to his orange skin as you shift lower. His eyes are shut, and he doesn’t notice you moving, until you’re close enough to press the flat of your tongue against the top of the slit, just getting a feel for it before continuing. You hear him gasp, and when you look up he’s staring down at you in shock, his face flushed the deepest orange you’ve ever seen. He bites down savagely on his lip when you lick along the same spot, practically vibrating with tension, and when you push your tongue into the soft warmth of his cloaca, he moans brokenly, arching his back against the bed. You quickly establish a rhythm, working your mouth against him while probing inside of him as far as you can, and the sounds he makes are remarkable. 

You keep track of how vocal he is, using it to modify your technique when he shows signs of catching his breath, changing the thrusts of your tongue when the trembling in his hips starts to subside. He’s louder when you rub along the sides where he’s flushed and soft, and you use one hand to massage the skin while you work the inside of him. The sensation is obscene, wet and slick with your spit, the flavor undeniably organic and musty, but it’s turning you on so much that it hurts. Then his cries turn urgent, and you feel his hand pushing down against the top of your head, the points of his claws pricking into the back of your neck as he fights the urge to grab you. He goes rigid for a moment as the muscles around your tongue and fingers twitch, then shudders violently with a rough gasp, pressing his head into the pillow while you continue to move inside of him. His breathing turns ragged as you feel him spasming weakly against your mouth. The pressure on top of your head eases as he calms, then turns into shaky, gentle caressing until you pull back, and you’ve never seen anyone look at you with so much affection before in your life.

When he unravels his tail enough to let you move again, you lift yourself up and hover over him on the bed. You’re both out of breath, and he reaches up to brush the backs of his hard claws against the side of your face, then down along the curve of your neck, watching you with half-lidded eyes in a way that makes your face feel hot. It’s almost affecting you more than going down on him did, and you lean into him with a sigh when he presses a long, firm kiss to your mouth. He sucks gently on your lower lip, wet and just the right amount of teeth to make you breathe harder, and when he unexpectedly presses the heel of his palm against your hard cock, you hiss. Despite how wonderful it feels after you’ve gotten so worked up, you don’t dare move your hips with those claws so close, since you’re well-acquainted with how deceptively sharp they are. He seems to understand when you regretfully push his hand away, and you’re just resigning yourself to using your own means to get off, when something nudges against your hip, sliding fluidly into your pants and wrapping firmly around the entire length of your cock. He grins when you curse, and you’d be amazed at the prehensility of his tail if you had the presence of mind left to appreciate it as he starts to coil and move it in a way that has you clutching at his shoulders in seconds. You bury your face in the feathers around his neck, making the most embarrassing sounds of your life as he brings you to orgasm far more quickly than you’ve ever managed on your own, squeezing until you’re milked dry. 

He covers you with his wings when you relax against him, having more or less lost the ability to move, and the warmth of it is heavenly. His tail twines securely around your legs again, molding the two of you together as he wraps his arms around your shoulders. The mattress is ruined, and you’ve made a complete mess of your pants, but you’ll deal with it tomorrow. There’s no way you’re untangling yourself from him now, not when he’s wrapped himself around you like he’s afraid you’ll leave. You bury your fingers in his hair and hold him close, whisper to him that you love him and finally confide in him your secret, that you needed him more than he understands. He coils around you tighter as you talk, telling him how you’ve always driven people away when you try to help them, how you consistently fail at understanding what your friends need, and how you ruined things with the only other person who ever gave you a chance. He listens to you in silence, then admits to you in a quiet voice that he’d be gone right now if it weren’t for you. The day you found him on the meteor’s surface, he was one final decision away from spreading his wings and flying into the void, trying his luck out in the drifting, lonely sea of dream bubbles where maybe someday he would chance upon his brother’s if he searched long enough. He says that he was tired of trying, of enduring the guilt and the memories without so much as a glimmer of hope that it would get better, that anyone would ever understand why he avoided them or see past the alterations in his body to realize that he’s still their friend, that nothing had changed for him, that he was still the same person who entered the game with them and fought alongside them until John died, and how much he sacrificed when he abandoned his timeline and threw himself into his own sprite. He’d given up before you came along, was on the verge of abandoning everything again, but even though he’d hated you at first for looking like a parody of his dead brother and relentlessly prying away at his problems without permission, he tells you that he never thought he would be happy again until he found his Bro and forgot about the session and everything that had happened. But you proved him wrong, and he loves you for it, he says, for being his brother and helping him even though he fought you and hurt you, for forcing him to come to terms with the changes he’s been through, and the kiss he presses to your lips is profound, matching your feelings in the way he cradles the side of your face with careful talons while you kiss him back. You fall asleep with him wrapped around you, and you feel more complete than you’d ever imagined, complimented perfectly by the orange sprite of your brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awesome fanart of this and the previous chapter [here](http://notacorpse.tumblr.com/post/86361349149/i-swear-this-is-the-last-one-i-am-sorry-for-the) by Tumblr user notacorpse!!


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